When record mass abstention crax the façade of sham democracy – Greek elections September 2015

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum”

― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

Approximately half of Greece’s electorate abstained from voting in the snap elections of 20 September 2015.

More precisely, voter participation rate stooped to a record low of 56,6 percent marking the highest abstention rate in the history of parliamentary elections in Greece following the liberalisation of the military dictatorship, the Greek Junta, in 1974.

The mainstream media’s coverage hereof was sparse and wherever mentioned it was either marginalised by headers such as: Greeks still trust Tsipras(BBC), or depoliticised with comments of the likes of: It was clear… that voter apathy – the force behind an abstention rate that at almost 44% reached a record high – has now become the reality of Greece(The Guardian). Is the minority one-third of the Greek electorate more entitled to represent the Greek populace’s trust and forgiveness than the majority two-thirds, who did not vote for Alexis Tsipras? Does the recording-breaking abstention rate necessarily signify voter apathy, rather than, e.g., deliberate political rejection of the current electoral system? Voter participation has steadily been dropping since the transition from military to party rule in Greece in 1974, and as the abstention rate looms to overhaul the voter turnout, the seams of the past forty years’ electoral system can be heard splitting.

And as such, the abstention rate must be kept to the fore in any discussion regarding the legitimacy of the political system that be in Greece, since the usual bourgeoisraison d’être falls back on either electoral support, as indicated by a high voter turnout, or, in case the ballot backfires, c.f. the rise of the Greek Junta, the last lines of defense: intervention by the international bourgeoisie and military coup attempts by the deep state. Ideologically the ruling class has nothing to argue with but pseudoscientific theories such as Social Darwinism, Platonian tripartite state classism and the Thomas Hobbesianmyth that mankind requires protection from its own so-called savage nature by a sovereign authority. Nevertheless, social inequality is a fact; transnational super-conglomerates are a fact; military superpowers are a fact; highly organised and inter-competing ruling elites that stand on respective bases of oppressed classes are a fact.

In the end, only continued participation in bourgeois parliamentarian elections can uphold the massively state propagandized lie that the current political system is of the people, by the people, and for the people rather than what is the case: a sham democracy that historically emerged through fractional concessions of power by ruling classes in response to military defeats, riots and revolutions.

Boycott elections! We do not need the system – the system needs us!

For it is a system rigged for class exploitation, domination, coercion, control, authoritarian disciplining, brainwashing, disempowerment and the promotion of egotistic values: greed, envy, arrogance, emotional callousness, chauvinism and sadism.

Dubbed “democracy” when it booms and fascism when it busts, Capitalism’s days of booming are reaching an end as its ecocidal and malignant growth-economy is pushing against planet Earth’s natural and finite limits. Climate change, resource depletion, the mass collapse of eco-systems, aggravated extinction rate and an ever narrowing biodiversity stand as a grim testimony hereof.

Power never willingly relinquishes power and class antagonisms on a global level are screechingly sharpening.

For a whole-hearted struggle against all forms of class oppression and for socio-ecological emancipation, – rise up!